Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

  “Given our staffing situation, we’re fortunate to have Freddie. There’s also some interesting background. Freddie is the grandson of his namesake, Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer and mathematician. The grandfather is known primarily for contributing to the concept of stellar nucleosynthesis—how all the elements beyond hydrogen, helium, and lithium were generated by fusion within suns, rather than present at the origin of the universe.

  “Many physicists think Hoyle should have received a Nobel Prize in physics, but his controversial stances on various topics, such as rejecting the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the universe’s origin and proposing life on Earth didn’t evolve here, made him too many enemies in the scientific world. It’s ironic that Hoyle coined the term ‘Big Bang’ but used it to make fun of scientists supporting the theory. He also wrote science fiction in collaboration with his son.”

  “I’d heard of him,” said Jason, “but not the details. And talk about ironic . . . this senior Hoyle expounded on life elsewhere in the universe and wrote science fiction, and here we are listening to his grandson converse with an alien whatever from somewhere out there.”

  CHAPTER 17

  DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

  Three days passed before the new Level 3 staff met again as a group. Everyone had had time to think of what the first briefings had revealed, read past reports, talk to the previous Level 3 staff members, and settle into the site’s routines but had yet to individually interact with Simeon.

  They gathered at 8:00 a.m. in the Level 3 conference room. Jason was the first to speak.

  “When can we talk with Simeon or whatever this thing is?”

  “That’s coming,” said Mueller, “but you need some more background.”

  “And why so much secrecy?” asked Ralph. “This has got to be the biggest event in history. We need a hundred times as many people working on this. A thousand. Ten thousand!”

  Sinclair answered, “Yes, we’re all aware of how limited our resources are, considering the magnitude of this. But think carefully of what would happen if the existence of the Object became known worldwide.”

  “People would be amazed at the most exciting thing possible,” enthused Ralph.

  “Chaos,” said Zach, shaking his head. “Consider the effects on economies, religions, general society.”

  “But you can’t keep something like this secret. It’s too big and will eventually come out,” Jill protested.

  Huxler raised a hand for attention. “Let’s think for a moment. What would be some consequences of such a revelation? How about economic effects?”

  “What economic effects?” asked Ralph.

  Jason grimaced. As brilliant as Ralph was at programming, his naiveté could be annoying. “Uncertainty. I’ve dabbled with the stock market and even considered working for investment companies at one point—they were interested in modeling investor behavior. I quickly realized I didn’t like almost anyone working in the industry, but a major lesson I learned was about the effects of uncertainty. Investors and companies fear not knowing more than anything. If they have reasonable assurances of the future playing field, no matter what specific issues they may have . . . you know, regulations, taxes, politics, and so on . . . then they have a degree of confidence in their projections. Without such confidence, they become frozen—not wanting to make decisions.”

  “But how does that relate to the Object, alien thing, whatever?” asked Jill.

  “Consider the energy companies,” Jason said.

  Jill threw a blank stare back at Jason.

  “Energy, Jill,” Jason said impatiently. “The oil companies’ business is energy. What do we have here? Whatever the thing is, it’s drawing on an unknown energy source. It communicates with us, maintains a fixed position that must require energy, and God knows what else it does and can do. And all that without any obvious energy source.”

  “But how are the oil companies affected?” asked Jill.

  “It tells us there’s a source of energy we don’t recognize. Half of developing new technologies is knowing what’s possible. While we might take a long time to determine what the Object is drawing on, the energy companies will figure it will happen someday.”

  “Jason’s right,” said Zach. “And they will change their current and future plans. They will be hesitant to sink huge funds into new oil and gas fields they can’t be sure will be used decades down the road, and they’ll turn to shorter-term projects. Of course, the other side of the coin is they might sink more resources into research trying to figure out our little friend. Who knows?”

  “A major decline in the stock market is guaranteed,” said Andrew. “Once investors realize anything new is likely decades off, at best, the stocks would recover, but a major recession in the world economy might be inevitable, especially after all the other fallout from public disclosure.”

  “And you can easily dream up scenarios where almost any sector of the economy could be affected,” said Jason. “It wouldn’t even need to be based on anything real . . . just rumors. Given the state of the media and the blogosphere, every crackpot idea will get a hearing. Imagine rumors that the Object is giving us information on how to cure all diseases. What happens to the drug industry stocks?”

  They bandied potential economic effects back and forth for perhaps another ten minutes until Huxler changed the discussion’s direction.

  “Leaving aside pure economics for the moment, consider the religious implications.”

  Ralph groaned. “Oh, man. You’re right. That could be really scary. The wackos will come out of the woodwork like you couldn’t possibly believe.”

  “How religions would respond is a big question,” argued Huxler. “My own feeling is the major religions would accommodate the new reality of the universe, but the fringe groups are likely to go crazy. Just how crazy is anybody’s guess.”

  “I can imagine the sermons already,” said Andrew. “Satan returned to Earth! Scientists are minions of the Dark Lord out to destroy the world! Blasphemy!”

  “Would it really get that bad?” asked Jill, aghast.

  “I’m afraid so, at least in some places,” added Zach.

  Huxler moved them along again. “Then there’s the international ramifications.”

  Zach grunted. “In the old days, you might worry about starting a real war over this, unless the U.S. was willing to share everything with all other countries. Those days are probably past, but the uproar would be huge.”

  “But at some point, aren’t we going to share all of this with the other countries anyway?” asked Ralph.

  “Are we?” replied Huxler with a professorial tone—as if asking them to consider before responding.

  “Listening to these briefings, I didn’t hear all that much of value to share except the thing’s existence,” said Jill.

  “Nothing now,” said Sinclair. He had been silent, but the way he emphasized the word now got their attention.

  “So, you’re looking to the future and anticipating more from the Object,” stated Zach. “What kind of things? I’m guessing fantasies about limitless energy, curing diseases, and more. But surely that’s off into the future? I agree with Jill. You don’t seem to have gotten much from Simeon.”

  “Only if you look from a short-term perspective, such as ‘What has it told us this week?’” said Huxler. “But think about the totality of what we’ve gleaned so far.”

  “Wilbur is correct,” said Mueller. “I’ve been plotting anything new and when it happened. Now, this has only been my own interpretation of something new transmitted to us either deliberately by Simeon or by our deductions. Although there hasn’t been all that much, the limited data points I’ve plotted are awfully suggestive of an exponential relationship’s early stages.”

  Most of the group nodded or at least pretended they understood Huxler. Jill had no inhibitions about admitting ignorance.

  “Exponential relationship? What does that mean?

  Mueller smiled. “Consider if every day
someone gives you a dollar, and you save it. If you plot on a graph the total money you’ve saved, the graph is a straight line because the amount each new day is the same. This would be a linear relationship between days and money saved. But what if each day the amount of money doubles? Then, instead of a straight line, you get a curved line that goes higher each day than the day before. What if on day one, he gives up one new piece of information? Then on day two, he gives two pieces; on day three, four; on day four, eight new pieces; and on and on. On the thirtieth day, he would give us three billion new pieces of information.”

  Jill’s eyes bugged out. She didn’t quite follow Mueller’s explanation, but the looks on the other people’s faces told her most of them had, and they believed what he had said. “Okay, so you’re saying by the end of the month, who knows what he would be giving us?”

  “Right,” said Mueller, “but the problem is we don’t know Simeon’s timeline. What could be a short timetable for him might be decades for us. Even if I’m right, there’s no way to know when we would get to a meaningful point in my exponential curve.”

  “But let’s go back to the issue of sharing,” emphasized Sinclair. “If we are sharing with the world, what if he tells us something we wouldn’t want some other country to know?”

  “Not only other countries,” said Zach. “Maybe things individuals shouldn’t know. An easy way to make a nuclear bomb or create a plague in your basement, mind control, or any science-fiction nightmare you can dream up.”

  Jill hesitated, her face pale. “But,” she stammered, “that’s impossible—isn’t it?”

  “Impossible for us,” said Mueller, “but we have absolutely no idea about the limitations of Simeon’s knowledge.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree,” Huxler said sadly, his ordinarily cheerful countenance somber. “As much as I believe openness is best, if not in the short term, then long term, here we’re dealing with a literal Pandora’s box. Once opened, God knows what knowledge gets out. There simply is no limit to the potential catastrophe.”

  “And the U.S. being the only country to have such knowledge would be better?” Willie asked derisively. “I think we all know government agencies and individuals where the answer would be, ‘Hell no!’”

  Jill’s face turned paler. “But then . . . no one should have such knowledge.”

  “Maybe we’re catastrophizing,” said Huxler. “But the point is that we don’t know what the level of risks could be or on what timetable. Howard’s graph is suggestive, but with too few points and too short a timeframe. For all we know, the danger might only manifest millennia from now.”

  “Or never—if my graph is wrong.”

  “The thing is . . . the Object is here now,” said Sinclair. “We are here now. We’re forced into a situation where we need to find out as much as we can as fast as we can. It’s been a minor miracle that we’ve kept everything quiet this long. Even as restrictive as we’ve been, more and more people suspect something is going on here. Pilots land supplies on a nonexistent airstrip. Level 1 and Level 2 staff members return to their lives. Despite warnings, people are people. Word will inevitably leak out.

  “So,” said Sinclair, “given what you know and what we just talked about, you’ve got to be wondering why are you here? How does the Virtual-Reality system fit into all this?” Sinclair turned to Mueller. “Howard?”

  “You’ve had a summary of the project’s history, read transcripts, and listened in on other people talking with Simeon. Understand that we have reached an impasse. Many of our interactions have focused on establishing communication, but so far we’ve learned very little about either what the Object is or its purpose on Earth. Simeon has absorbed whatever we gave him about the human race and history, but nothing reciprocal has come back. Although I was not initially in favor of it about a year ago, we proposed a quid pro quo status with Simeon. Further information from our end must be followed by us getting something in return, with a veiled threat that we’ll cut off all communication, even casual conversation. This was General Sinclair’s proposal, and, as you might imagine, it touched off a firestorm of arguments around here.”

  “But what would you hope to gain?” asked Jason. “I would think it held all the cards.”

  “Intentions,” said Zach.

  “Right,” agreed Andrew. “When you’re unsure what an opponent plans, you force it to take action or, in this case, make an intention evident. Because the Object was being obstinate, the idea was to make it respond to a cut-off threat.”

  “But what if it did nothing? What if the Object didn’t really care about talking to us?” asked Jill.

  Zach looked at Jill and shook his head. “Then that would be a response. It could be telling us it either didn’t care or thought it could outlast us.”

  “I understood Leo’s reasoning, even if I didn’t agree,” said Mueller. “We made the proposal to exchange, gave logical arguments, and waited for a response. Note that we didn’t explicitly say we would stop communicating, but we figured Simeon would get the implication. It turned out to be a breakthrough. What happened was that the Object, Simeon, didn’t respond for several days. We had about concluded that Zach’s scenario was right—it didn’t care.”

  Sinclair’s smile was a break from his normally severe expression. “Don’t think I wasn’t about to admit my idea had been a disaster, when suddenly my reputation as a brilliant strategist was saved.”

  “Simeon reappeared on the fourth day,” said Mueller, “right at 9:00 a.m.—which was the mutually agreed-on time for regular contact. As with everything here, it was recorded, and we’ll play the interchange for you.”

  With that, Mueller activated the wall monitor, and Huxler turned down the room lights.

  Mueller faced them, removed his glasses, and wiped them with his handkerchief. “What you will see is the recording of Simeon talking to us. Our side was recorded, voice only, and overlaid on the Simeon recording to show both sides of the conversation. So, you’ll see and hear Simeon and hear my voice. I’ll stop the recording when I want to comment or you have questions. Comments are also inserted into the dialogue. You should be able to distinguish those added comments.”

  Mueller touched a key and kept his hand poised above the keyboard in readiness to stop and start the recording to hear comments.

  Simeon’s face appeared on the monitor. He looked straight ahead but did not speak.

  Mueller’s voice was the first sound. To the listeners, Mueller seemed to be straining to sound nonchalant.

  “Hello, Simeon. How are you today?”

  “Of course, we had no idea whether Simeon or the Object understood the meaning of such phrases in opening a day’s interactions. Simeon seemed to understand it was a human formality to indicate polite interest of one party in the other’s well being.”

  “Hello, Howard. I am fine today. And yourself?”

  “I am fine also. It’s a beautiful day here today.”

  Mueller paused, then continued. “I must say we were a little worried about you. We haven’t heard from you for several days.”

  “Our last conversation required consideration before reaching a decision.”

  “And has a decision been made?” asked Mueller with a hint of trepidation in his voice.

  “Yes, Howard. We will continue our conversations but within limitations and conditions.”

  “And what are those limitations and conditions?”

  “I understood you require more information on what I am and what my intentions are.”

  “At this point in the recording,” said Mueller, “the listeners could hear murmurings in the background, probably in response to hearing that Simeon understood the purpose of the threatened blackout.”

  Simeon continued. “I agree to tell you something of myself, although I warn you in advance some of the answers will not be satisfying. In return, you will tell me more about each of you individually and your culture. I see Jeff and Wilbur are present. Although we have spoken
many times, you have not told me anything about each of you, except that you are different individuals and have single names. I want to know everything possible about yourselves, a wider range of humans, and as much as possible about human history and interactions.”

  Simeon smiled. Mueller didn’t speak, nor did the others listening to the original session because there were none of the low murmurings in the recording as before. This lasted for almost a minute.

  “Simeon,” said Mueller, breaking the silence with wonder in his voice, “you smiled.”

  “Howard, if I understand correctly, the change in facial expression you refer to as a ‘smile’ is part of your nonverbal communication. It can have many different meanings. Such as the sharing of a positive common thought or memory, the successful completion of a task, a surprise, or, as in this case, the anticipation of a question or an event.”

  “In this case? You mean you are anticipating a question from us?”

  “Yes, but let me first give the other condition for our continued interactions. You, of course, want knowledge. The obvious difference in our technology levels can have no other result than your wanting access to advanced technology.”

  Mueller paused the recording. “As you can imagine, the audience listening to the interchange collectively held their breath.”

  Simeon continued. “There is the possibility of your accessing some technology you are as yet unfamiliar with, but the limitations and timeline will almost certainly be a disappointment.”

  At this point, Jason interrupted. “Can you stop again for a second?”

  Mueller complied.

  “But Simeon already told us something important,” he enthused.

  “It says whatever technology is behind the Object is not beyond humans,” Zach added confidently. “Only that we haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Jason joined in. “And knowing something is possible is half the solution!”